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“Damn,” I said. “And, I thought I was doing well for myself.”
Jason laughed. “I think it’s safe to say we’re both doing pretty well for ourselves,” he said. “Personally, I feel it has less to do with our talents, and more do to with our superior good looks.”
“Oh, I couldn’t agree more,” I laughed. “Everyone has talent in some form or the other, but not everyone can look like us.”
“Too true,” he laughed. Then his tone softened into seriousness. “Sometimes I can’t quite believe it. Did you ever think we would get this far, this fast?”
“Fuck, no,” I replied. “I wasn’t even sure I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps.”
“I remember,” Jason agreed. “You were dead set on being a rebel. What was your life’s goal again? Musician?”
I snorted. “DJ,” I admitted. “I was fairly decent at mixing tracks.”
Jason laughed. “I remember that New Year’s party during our junior year. You bulldozed the DJ, what was his name… Z-crack?”
“It was Z-track,” I corrected. “And, I didn’t bulldoze anyone. The dipshit was stoned off his ass and passed out after the third cover. I had to take over.”
“You weren’t half bad,” Jason laughed. “Is it possible you missed your calling?”
“Nope,” I said confidently. “I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Your dad would be so proud of everything you’ve been able to achieve.”
I fell silent for a moment. Thinking of Dad was always hard for me. We had clashed a lot when I was a teenager. I had thought he was too hard on me, and he was worried I didn’t have what it took to run the business he had built from scratch. It was only after he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s that our relationship had started to shift.
The knowledge that we didn’t have very much time left with each other lifted the strain between us. I became more involved with Dad’s projects and started to understand why he had been so hard on me growing up. He was trying to prepare me, he was trying to groom me to take over, and that required a staunch work ethic and a lot of sacrifices.
“I think he would have been,” I replied. “I just wish he could have seen it all happen. He died just before my first hotel opening in LA, so he never got to see the hotel’s success.”
“I remember,” Jason said. “But you still managed to get it done.”
“I promised him I would,” I recalled.
I turned around on my swivel chair to look at the spectacular view before me. The ocean was rippled with competing hues of peacock green and aquamarine blue. Its surface seemed to be encrusted with millions and millions of diamonds cascading down from the sun’s gentle rays. The soft, powdery white sand of the beach had a glowing look about it, and the leaves of the ironwood and coconut trees that lined the coast blew gently in the breeze. It was an idyllic setting and by far the most beautiful location of all my hotels and resorts.
Dad had always dreamed of opening a resort in Hawaii, and I was finally seeing that dream come to fruition. It was a bittersweet sense of accomplishment to know that he would never see it.
“So, anyway,” I said, trying to focus on the conversation at hand. “How are you? How are things with Brittany? Or was it Cassandra?”
Jason laughed. “Brittany and Cassandra were both three years ago, man.”
“Seriously?”
“Yup. The current lady in my life is work, and to be honest, she can be a bit of a bitch sometimes.”
“Hey, I feel you,” I nodded. “There’s no time for relationships anymore.”
“That was why Simone and I broke up in the first place,” Jason told me.
“Simone!” I exclaimed. “That was her name. Sorry… Continue.”
He laughed. “I was just working all the time. I kept bailing on dinner dates, disappearing right after sex, taking phone calls during our time together.”
“She broke it off?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And honestly… I was relieved.”
“Sounds like the story of my life,” I shared. “The same t
